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| Friday, February 3, 2006 |
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My favorite 
| | post today. (Actually from two days ago, but still: timeless.) |
Volve on
| | In an earlier post, Salim also enlarged on the Live Web and other concepts that help us understand the evolution of the Net. Good stuff. |
Make the Transition
| | Hey, now the rest of ya'll can come to my town for an event. |
| | While technology often fosters monocultures, CITS studies the way technology crosses and changes multiple cultures — in business, education, government, the arts and everyday life, around the world. |
| | And while CITS has put on quite a few events over the years (JD Lasica and I took part in one last October), this is the Center's first effort at what we would call an Industry Event if it was just about industry. Instead it's about discussing where technology is headed and how society is evolving along with it. So we're looking for folks from lots of different cultures, occupations and disciplines. |
| | Some topics on the agenda: |
| | - Emergent networks of donors and volunteers responding to natural disasters and human crises
- Wikis, blogs and other new writing and publishing forms that have emerged on the Web to both augment and challenge incumbent industries
- Real social networks in virtual environments, such as World of Warcraft and MySpace
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| | The conference program is a mix of keynotes, demonstrations and self-organized discussion. The CITS folks are working hard to make the whole thing challenging, informative and fun. |
| | And small. About 100 people, total. |
| | By the way, Santa Barbara's airport (SBA) is just North of the UCSB campus, and flights here often don't cost much (or any) more than flights to LAX. |
| | If you're driving, Santa Barbara is about 300 miles down the coast from the Bay Area, and 90 miles up the coast from Los Angeles. Expect a gorgeous drive from either direction. In April, California can be as green as Ireland, with flowers blooming everywhere. |
| | Look forward to seeing you there. |
World of Beginnings
| | The Internet isn't an agreement, it's a network. That network, originally built by DARPA contractors, is now a collection of networks controlled by a surprisingly small number of for-profit entities (despite Doc and David's assertion that "no one owns it"). In fact, fewer than 12 companies world-wide control 99% of the Internet infrastructure. These media companies - and network companies with huge and sometimes controlling investments from media companies -- have no reason ~~what-so-ever~~ to act in the interest of __democracy__ and evey interest to act in their own interests. It's called "profit." |
| | David's point about changes in infrastructure ownership is right on. Same with his profit point. I even agree with this: |
| | To the companies that own these media outlets and distrbution mechanisms - of which the Internet is just another way to get ads/content from them to you - you are just a purse at the end of a pipe. In fact, the more time you are spending doing stuff online that does not make them money (like protesting silly things like media de-regulation, exercising your so-called 1st Amendment rights in your silly so-called "blogs") the less likely it is that you are generating "impressions" for which they get paid by advertisers or puying pay-per-view movies. |
| | David goes on to paint a depressing picture in which the original Internet dream of democracy (which he says World of Ends was about, and which I'd dispute, but that's beside the point) is fighting a losing battle against corporate greed. |
| | On a larger topic there — commercial imperatives, one (but the only one) of which may be greed — I see cause for optimism. Why should tiered or gated service be the only ways carriers can make money off Internet service? As I said yesterday here, phone companies are advantaged over cable companies at providing symmetrical service and doing all kinds of business that are made possible by opening service, rather than closing it down. Competition here is to the advantage of all of us. |
| | Given all the depressing news, I sometimes wonder if I'm sane to have any optimism here at all; but, well, I do. |
New Las Vegas production
| | Several days before CES started, our family stayed in the Aladdin, which was getting ready to morph into Planet Hollywood. On morning walks to a coffee shop in the Desert Passage, I monitored progress in preparation for demolition of everything that recalled Arabia. Huge walls were being erected in the middle of public spaces, as if to hide giant actors, changing costumes. |
| | They say clocks don't matter in Vegas. It's always showtime. |
Out looking
| | Two more sunset sets, from last night and the night before. |
Please pay for what we're not giving you
| | My biggest issue with these fund-drives is that they're trying to get you to pay for something by depriving you of it. There's virtually no NPR programming on during the fund drive week. |
And sends them to hell
| | On The Daily Show two nights ago, Jon Stewart showed a cutaway to Hillary Clinton at the State of the Union Address. She looked scary. Said Jon, That look? That look is where boners go to die. |
| | If that's so, this look is what scares them to death. |
Fighting the good fight
Today's challenge
| | I'd challenge Doc to elaborate on how he is not wedded to his views in The Cluetrain Manifesto. I'd ask Doc to show us where he's restated the views of the Cluetrain Manifesto to see if they survive in the new understanding. I'd ask Doc to tell us what new understanding he has about the Cluetrain Manifesto, if he has any. |
| | Here is an example of the kind of thing I believe Paul Montgomery is objecting to. Doc makes an assertion about what weblogging is about, one that gets repeated in some form or another about 1000 times according to Google, yet there is no evidence to demonstrate its validity. |
| | The assertion was "blogging is about making and changing minds," which I said here, Jay Rosen ran with here, and Google finds in 764 places. The first, for what it's worth, is Jay's post. The second is mine. And the third is Dave Rogers' post that I'm responding to here. |
| | I made that "assertion" (to use Dave's noun) in the context of a discussion about journalism. Here's the whole paragraph: |
| | Looking back on the event, I find myself thinking there are three approaches to journalism represented here. One is the "cool" approach of traditional journalism, including network broadcasting (in which NPR is no exception). One is the "hot" approach of talk radio, which has since expanded to TV sports networks and now Fox TV. The third is the engaged approach of weblogging. What we're doing here may be partisan in many cases, but it is also inconclusive. Blogging is about making and changing minds. It's less about scoring points against perceived enemies (with certain exceptions, of course) than about scaffolding new and better understandings of one subject or another. |
| | I was talking about the differences between three different kinds of journalism, blogging being one of them. I believe one thing that distinguishes blogging from the other forms of journalism is that the form is suited to provisional statements, and espression of partial understandings. To forwarding of ideas that may or may not move forward. |
| | In March of last year I compared this to rolling snowballs. I brought up the making and changing minds point in that post as well. That very post, by the way, offered evidence of that assertion's validity: |
| | Either Dave chose to ignore that evidence, or he just dislikes it on other grounds. Like, perhaps, that it's a generalization. Did I suggest that blogging is only about making and changing minds? I don't think so, but I can see why Dave might. He seems to like his truths in literal form, and snarks about my fondness for metaphor. We're different. |
| | Anyway, about Cluetrain. I really wish my last comment in response to Paul Montgomery's post had survived the Blogger posting gauntlet, but it didn't. Otherwise I'd just point to it here and save myself the trouble of repeating it. But it didn't, so here goes. |
| | Paul's last comment was this: |
| | Thanks for replying, Doc. I admit it's less fair to use you as a target for my rant about puzzles than the others. Your post backs up the arrogance with substance, as always. :P |
| | I still think your book is all about marketing, though, from the title on down. Who else is it primarily aimed at but marketing VPs and PR professionals? That's not a bad thing at all, of course, especially when it leads to nice consulting fees for some lucky clue-ticketmaster. If someone's going to tell them how wrong they are, that someone might as well get paid in full for doing it. |
| | First, the arrogance thing. Says here it means, |
| | - Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance.
- Marked by or arising from a feeling or assumption of one's superiority toward others:
an arrogant contempt for the weak. See Synonyms at proud. |
| | Where was I being arrogant? Shit, I'll cop to being defensive every once in awhile (like, now). But arrogant? I think of myself as a relatively modest and humble guy. |
| | Now, if we're talking about Cluetrain, sure. Cluetrain was arrogant as hell, I suppose. So were Luther and Marx, from whose most famous documents Cluetrain borrowed a format and a title, respectively. Except those guys weren't joking. We were. Sort of, anyway. |
| | Cluetrain wasn't about marketing. It was about markets. It spoke from markets to marketing. As Jakob Nielsen put it afterwards, we defected from marketing and sided with markets. Far as I know, we said a bunch of things about, and on behalf of, markets, that had never been said before. Speaking only for myself, I'm sure this is why Cluetrain resonated with so many people. |
| | We didn't write the Cluetrain website to make money, and none of us made a big pile of dough from the book, either. We never formed an organization, took any dues, or monetized anything other than the book. There are no Cluetrain t-shirts or mugs or bumper stickers on Cafe Press. And we've turned down any number of offers to join or form organizations that leverage the Cluetrain name. Yes, some of us made some money on the speaking circuit afterwards, but so what? |
| | Truth is, we've all moved on. David Weinberger is working on his second book since Cluetrain. Chris Locke is working on his third. I'm working on my first. |
| | There are views in Cluetrain to which I am, I suppose, "wedded". This — |
| | — still energizes me, seven years after Chris Locke created it. Yes, it's an arrogant statement, but whose arrogance is it? It's not the impotent mass of consumers called by Howard Beale to go to their windows and yell "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore". It's a calm statement of fact a individuals in a market made potent by a networked condition that was never there before. |
| | When Chris wrote that, $25 billion a year in venture money was flowing into Silicon Valley alone, mostly funding junk companies founded on the belief that the Internet was God's gift to the Supply side. Much as the Net did for the supply side, it did at least as much for the demand side. Including the power to supply itself. Consumers could be producers too. |
| | That last line is one that didn't appear in Cluetrain. It's one I realized in the years since. That's an example of a new understanding about what we were saying, or trying to say, in Cluetrain. |
| | But it's not about Cluetrain. Fact is, I'm tired of looking back on Cluetrain for Truth or anything much other than a reminder that four guys once had faith that the human beings that comprise markets are what markets are all about, and that it's delusional for companies to believe that customers in a networked world will put up with being "captured", "owned", "managed" or "controlled". |
| | There are many times since then that my faith in networked markets — or my understanding of them — has been shaken. In fact, that faith fights with a competing fear that the Net will be ruined by carriers, copyright absolutists, patent trolls, lawmakers and regulators. I worry that only a relatively few geeks and their allies have a clue what the Net is, and how important it is to keep it open, free and (in current parlance) neutral to commercial and governmental interests. I think we're in a battle there, and that the odds don't favor us. |
| | Yet I remain optimistic. I see ways to win. |
| | And I'd rather talk about that kinda stuff, frankly, than Cluetrain. Or how I have "restated the views of the Cluetrain Manifesto to see if they survive in the new understanding". Shit, I've been doing that, one way or another, for the last seven years. Too much, probably. I'm tired of it. There's more important and interesting stuff to talk about. And do. |
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